A Marathoner Who’s the Perfect Patient

As Jack Passalugo of Allentown watched the Boston Marathon® on television last spring, he couldn’t help but feel discouraged.

Preventing future injuries

He ran the Boston Marathon in 2005 (photo above), and Jack Passalugo hopes for a repeat in 2007. He helps prevent the stress fracture that sidelined him this year by stretching carefully before and after workouts. Stretching increases flexibility and blood flow and eases tension.

Passalugo, 49, had run every Boston marathon for the past six years, but now a stress fracture in his shin kept him sidelined.

“I knew something was wrong when I’d feel pain at the beginning of my runs,” he says. “I didn’t worry at first, because the pain would go away after four or five miles.” Then just weeks before the marathon, Passalugo woke up with pain in the leg. It was time for a visit to his sports medicine physician, Laura Dunne, M.D., of Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network.

An X-ray revealed a stress fracture. “He was pretty disappointed, but I told him if he ran in Boston, he could risk injuring his leg further,” Dunne says. Clearly, Passalugo needed to sit this one out. For the next several weeks he stuck with only moderate activity—walking, swimming—to let the leg heal. “It was better than being in a cast for six months because I didn’t listen,” he says.

Passalugo has run 19 marathons and plans on running a lot more. To meet that goal, he’s had to listen to his body—and his sports medicine physician!

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